Beltorn

A cheap though effective tactic against berserk and mind control is to drop weapons at the end of a turn. it costs 0 Tus and if a soldier berserks he/she won't spend any Tus on shooting an will be immediately available. And if they are a victims of mind-controll, they won't pose any danger. Also you still get bravery points this way. On money: you get around 200k $ for each massive ship, so taking only 90k for airstriking is rather limiting.

StellarRat, what are your thoughts on discarding the fusion upgrade? And how much do you want them to scatter - 1-4 tiles?

Limiting equipment with engineering won't help anyways, because it is easy to manufacture equipment right now (as it should be). As I've written in an earlier thread about shields, it is easy to set up manufacturing of specific equipment. Building an additional workshop at one of the bases is cheap and another 15 engineers will take only 75k per month. Then you will have to pay for grenades which can't really cost too much or take too long to manufacture - they are expandable equipment after all and making them costlly either in money or manhours is a direct statement to players - do not use this item. It just adds tedium to the game, which frankly is not a solution at all. Best would be to reduce their damage, either directly or by increasing armour on aliens troops - afterall aliens already have access to super alloys, so high temperature resistant armour can't be too much problem for them. In similar vein, disabling fusion variants of grenades and rockets could be a solution for endgame grenade spamming. AFAIK, rockets are superseeded by singularity cannons so no real reason to have them upgraded 4 times (Alenium-Plasma-Fusion - Singularity Cannon) instead of 3 (Alenium- Plasma - Singularity Cannon). I do know that singularity cannons are much less versatile - you need a soldier in predator armour and can't stun, but stunning in endgame isn't on my priority list and there are better tools (electroshock grenades) to do that job. By the way, are fusion grenades in lore stated to be mostly thermal in effect or they produce both a shockwave and a ball of plasma, like a normal nuke would?

Yep, grenades only depend on strength stat, both for weight allowance - i.e. how many grenades soldier can carry and throwing accuracy, but using grenades doesn't train strength stat (at least i didn't notice, because my soldiers always carry 2 or 3 kilos more than their strenght allows). Using grenades gimps the player quite a bit: less money from missions, no training of important stats like accuracy and reflexes. I don't really think that reaction fire from aliens is an additional danger factor because when soldier expends all his TUs on shooting, aliens still reaction fire at that soldier, unless they are dead of course.

To add: in V21 and V22 stun gas grenades also act as smoke grenades and as somebody found can save a soldier from reaperification (a major feature). If a player uses mostly stun gas grenades to battle aliens, he also loses out on developing accuracy stat of his soldiers. Currently gas grenades are a bit too good, because they make alien AI run closer to you (due to smaller hit chance - same behavior as smoke grenades), make dealing with enemies easier (aliens can run into the cloud and lose consciousness), have very wide range - same as concussion grenades. Making them producible wouldn't work, because currently your equipment replenishes after every mission, though this could be true only for unlimited equipment. I haven't tested what happens if one soldier loses a weapon and returns to base - i assume he gets an identical weapon. As i understand basically the player would only need to produce overall around 20-30 grenades for his squad to not require any more during the game. Definitely not hard to do. My suggestion: reduce strength of gas by 20-25% and reduce its area of effect by 1 (to 3 tiles from center). To help with AI tell it to run away from smoke. Players would require to throw at least one more grenade of this type and throw a concussive grenade of either type to make aliens stay in gas longer (due to concussion). While we are at it: Electroshock grenades should have small area for stun - 2 tiles from center and 3 tiles for concussion, but higher chance concussion thyan concussion grenade and higher potency stun effect than gas grenade. Smoke grenade could use a different change - smoke should linger longer the closer it is to center of explosion - currently it is a bit random in distribution. I haven't used RPGs yet (don't want overkill), but i think that stun rockets should definitely be more potent and have higher gas area than grenades, but at the same time they should have a small area of medium damage (around laser pistol values) (the rocket explodes to disperse gas afterall).

Reapers can be gassed like most aliens. I usually try to wound them and then throw 3-4 gas grenades.

i'd prefer radius instead of LOS. Besides aliens do have psi-radar power. MC can have smaller radius than psi-radar. Radius-based limitation would allow for such an alien to be effective without entering combat, but still close enough to be located and eliminated in a turn or 2.

The amount of UFOs isn't really that troublesome: building 3 foxtrots per base asap has become standard for me. The trouble is the algorithm - sometimes it is 5 around the world and sometimes its 5 in the Southern America - last place i would decide to build my first base. Most of money for development in my game (on Veteran) comes from clearing UFOs. I'm in middle February and have 4 bases around the world: Middle East, Northern America. Australia and Southern America. Each base has 3 Foxtrots and at least 1 Condor which was already replaced with Corsairs. Middle East is the main base and has already replaced 2 Foxtrots with Marauders and is building the third Marauder and replaced both Condors with Corsairs. I have 60 engineers, 60 scientists and 14 soldiers. Overall, i have: 6 Corsairs, 11 Foxtrots, 2 Marauders and i'm building third and 1 Shrike and 1 Valkyrie - so i pay 1900k for interceptors and another 100k for Dropships, that's half of my upkeep not counting Hangars. Trouble is funding from countries is too small - it is barely enough to pay upkeep for 4 bases with Superb and Excellent relations all over the world and few goods in regions which have lower funding. I have cleared almost every UFO i crashed and only by clearing UFOs i have enough money to build new bases and new equipment and planes. Also, i dislike that from every 4-5 UFos that have spawned i had to clear 80%. Solutions: It would be great if the amount of combat UFOs increased (i mean fighter wings, bombers and strike cruisers), while decreasing the amount of landing capable UFOs and we were payed for them a bit like 10k for fighter, 15 for Heavy Fighters 25 for Interceptors and 30k for Bombers and 75 for Strike Cruisers. Europe funding level increased to rival USA and Soviet Union, i.e. starts at 400k . Overall funding increased by 25%, but negative modifiers from UFO activity were increased by 25% too. Adding an additional paycheck for capturing a fully intact UFO - this would be a nice bonus, but rare.

StellarRat, another way is to make aliens cluster 0,5-1 turn away from ufo and on a map you spot actually a couple of scouts/marksmen. Their positions are highly variable (i. multipe spawnpoints). A similar idea is that the enemy groups of 3-5 aliens are actually starting closer to your dropship (1,5-2 turns of movement) but instead they move toward UFO, killing civilans if any on their way and all alien troopers who got to the UFO make their stand there. If you wipe one group others learn that that direction is dangerous and relocate accordingly. If the fight is near UFO, UFO guards run out, except non-combatants. Btw, i consider 1 turn is 100 TUs..

Had an equally impressive mission with Andron terror team - i downed just another cruiser. Turned the dropship was slowly surrounded by Andron soldiers. Then Harridans opened fire with volleys of sniper fire and plasma cannons. As team weathered the first wave, the second wave brought more androns with an officer and a team with heavier weapons. A pair of medium drones kept at the distance, drawing fire from my 2 machinegunners. Cover from smoke grenades kept my soldiers from being singled out and everyone (including two rookies with laser carbines among all plasmas) barely alive. What i liked most is the actual sense of having to defend the drop point as i've met my first andron in range of 1 turn. After that the clean-up of a cruiser was rather anticlimactic - same 5-6 androns and 1-2 harridans. Shame there are no guard turrets (half-life 2 style) inside UFOs. Minor gripe: shouldn't all the robots (both androns and drones) have gotten immunity to smoke grenades? I mean advanced cameras and other sensors and all... This would make them seriously deadly. Possibly at least reduced effects by half, while lizard-trolls keep full immunity?

Well, it loads battlescape okay. Also i really doubt it will crash - it worked fine with 101. I suppose the team just put in a check to limit stats going more than 99 (why not 100, but that doesn't matter). Also i've heard that players can change max values themselves, though i don''t know if it's true yet.

Near Tel-Aviv, Israel - seems the most appropriate place in Middle-East to me.

Does anybody know how to edit saves? i've got a whole pack of soldiers with 101 stats and want to change them to something smaller.

Actually you can - when you are on the soldier equipment screen, there at least two groups in the lower left part. Unassigned and the ones in a Dropship. When you click on one of those groups it brings up a list of soldiers assigned to the group. If you look slightly higher (under the medals -there is a line - dropship assignment) you can reassign a soldier there. I mean its not ideal and some rework for "soldier equipment" and "barracks" panels would be welcome, but you can actually do most things from "soldier equipment" panel. Manual air combat allows you to do certain cases of aircombat without damage and without losses. An example 2 migs vs Cruiser - autoresolve leaves both planes around 30-50% of HP. In actual aircombat planes just fly in, launch torpedoes and fly out . In most cases no damage to the planes, though this depends on initial placement. On manual i was able to win with 2 Condors against a Cruiser, so my point is that you actually can get better results on manual. Autoresolve is better because it doesn't pay attention to fuel, which is a limiting factor in manual combat.

Not really, think it this way - these guys get ranks they would be assigned if they were in actual army not some semi-secret special forces. Also ranks don't always mean commanding rank- in soviet union rank was more like how long or how well that person served (generals excluded).

which game version? V21 Stable? Should be available with researching Alien Assault Plasma.

I gather this was intentional, so that Corsair wouldn't be a direct upgrade to Condors. With 2 cannons, Corsairs are very good and reliable against escort fighters and with plasmas they deal a pretty powerful punch against even Large ships.

You need to do this when they are available, i.e. not working on something. When you open engineering in the bottom part of screen you can see table of projects. The top line (the black one) has number of engineers in parenthesis. In order to fire some engineers, this number in parenthesis has to be bigger than zero. Only then can you fire personnel from hire/fire screen. Same for scientists.

This is my second playthrough. During my previous game, i got in November a small caesan base, attacked it and got "base report" xenopedia entry and unlocked "alien comms" and "base upgrade" researches. This time i got a very late - January - medium andron base, attacked it, but unlocked only "alien comms" research There is no "alien base analysis report" and no "base upgrade" research. I don't use explosives and hasn't damaged anything except occasional small cover. Any help? Obligatory save - this is before killing last two andron soldiers [ATTACH]3072[/ATTACH] I've noticed that small bases have alienbase core objects, while larger bases lack it. Could be the reason? AB_1_final.sav AB_1_final.sav

Answer to question one: every start of month and on every hiring.When you hire somebody it instantly adds another soldier to the list. A possible tactic to get some good rookies is to save and the order up all available and check if the new ones are any good and reload if you don't like the result.

An idea - if harridans wear full body extravehicular activity suits - make them immune to stun gas, otherwise advanced rebreathers in description are kind of useless. If you want a live harridan for research, get electroshock grenades.

Bots are much more aggressive now: they run up close and shoot. Also I've actually witnessed androns and harridans teleporting in from second floor to first on a landing ship. Harridan went for suicide bombing. Sadly close range accuracy is still not good enough - a caesan soldier shot 2 times from an adjacent tile on a sitting soldier and still didn't hit the soldier both times. I could believe about 1 time miss, i.e the five percent which happens, but 2?

When i complete a GC terror combat a terror site pop up appears. After i click any of 3 buttons it either offers some more terror site pop ups or finally gives a terror attack victory pop up. Obligatory save, just kill last caesan guard: [ATTACH]3035[/ATTACH] Terror_Site_Caesan 3.sav Terror_Site_Caesan 3.sav

Just had a terror site with caesans and encountered a light drone - it shot at a soldier and and moved away. When i came closer it shows only its shadow on the ground, i.e. look for shadow of a light drone in front of a soldier, because it got invisible. Obligatory Save: [ATTACH]3034[/ATTACH] Go_3.sav Go_3.sav

Good job! And it didn't break my saves) Oh and link the threads please.